THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE

THE SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY THAT FUEL SUCCESS AND PERFORMANCE AT WORK

BY SHAWN ACHOR

Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.

When we are positive, our brains become more engaged, creative, motivated, energetic, resilient, and productive at work.

This isn’t just an empty mantra. This discovery has been repeatedly borne out by rigorous research in psychology and neuroscience, management studies, and the bottom lines of organizations around the globe.

In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor, who spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, draws on his own research—including one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG—to fix this broken formula. Using stories and case studies from his work with thousands of Fortune 500 executives in 42 countries, Achor explains how we can reprogram our brains to become more positive in order to gain a competitive edge at work.

Isolating seven practical, actionable principles that have been tried and tested everywhere from classrooms to boardrooms, stretching from Argentina to Zimbabwe, he shows us how we can capitalize on the Happiness Advantage to improve our performance and maximize our potential.

A must-read for everyone trying to excel in a world of increasing workloads, stress, and negativity, The Happiness Advantage isn’t only about how to become happier at work. It’s about how to reap the benefits of a happier and more positive mind-set to achieve the extraordinary in our work and in our lives.

Learn the seven principles of the Happiness Advantage including

The Tetris Effect

How to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see—and seize—opportunities wherever we look.

The Zorro Effect

How to channel our efforts on small, manageable goals, to gain the leverage to gradually conquer bigger and bigger ones.

Social Investment

How to reap the dividends of investing in one of the greatest predictors of success and happiness—our social support network.

The TED Talk

Translations & Publishers

Book Club Guide

Brazil (Editora Saraiva)

Czech Republic (ANAG)

China -Simplified Chinese- (Cheers Press)

France (Belfond)

Holland (Servire/Kosmos)

Indonesia (Freedom Institute of Jakarta)

Italy (La Scuola di Palo Alto)

Japan (Tokuma Shoten)

Korea (Chungrim)

Russia (Exmo)

Spain (RBA)

Turkey (Kapital Medya Hizmetleri)

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About Shawn Achor

After spending twelve years at Harvard University, Shawn Achor has become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. His research on happiness made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 13 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. Shawn has worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies, and lectured in more than 50 countries speaking to CEOs in China, senior leaders at the Pentagon, schoolchildren in South Africa, and farmers in Zimbabwe. His Happiness Advantage training is the largest and most successful positive psychology corporate training program to date in the world.

Shawn is the author of New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage (2010) and Before Happiness (2013), as well as Ripple’s Effect and The Orange Frog. Shawn was published in the top psychology journal last year for the work he did at UBS in partnership with Yale University to create a more effective stress training. And he recently did a two-hour interview with Oprah at her house discussing happiness research and perception of success.